Columbus, Ohio- Kim Baisden walked through her Franklinton neighborhood yesterday with her youngest son, searching for bullets.
Early in the morning, she awoke to gunshots fired outside a W. Broad Street strip club a couple hundred feet from her home.
Andrew Conley, 28, of S. Oakley Avenue, was killed and two others were injured in the second fatal shooting in front of Downtown Dolls in about two months.
No one has been arrested in the slaying. That’s why Baisden was trolling for bullets, hoping to help police solve the crime.
Baisden’s son, Zachary, 13, was just as eager to find some clue.
Stray bullets from the strip club slaying on Aug. 10 left the side of Baisden’s Hayden Avenue house dotted with holes. In that homicide, Andre D. Price II, 22, a patron of the club, was killed and Chris Carter, 27, a security guard, was injured during a fight.
Like the incident yesterday, on Aug. 10, a fight started in the club, moved outside and was settled with gunfire.
“I get up every other night and hear gunshots,” Baisden said.
Early yesterday, four or five shots woke up Baisden. She called 911 and watched four or five men dart from the club’s parking lot through backyards on Hayden Avenue across the street from her house.
“I heard them yelling: ‘Did you get the strap?’ ” Baisden said. Strap is a slang word for gun, she said.
Conley was taken to Mount Carmel West hospital, where he was declared dead. The two wounded men, David Carter and Brian Eskridge, were taken to Grant Medical Center, where they were in stable condition yesterday.
Conley’s brother, Dennis Moton, said Conley worked at the club as a bouncer. He grew up in Columbus and had a daughter.
Shortly before 2 a.m. yesterday, patrons in the club at 1336 W. Broad St. had been fighting. An employee kicked them out, then one returned and started firing, said Columbus homicide detective Timothy Huston. The man shot from outside the club toward its open door, and the club’s security guard also fired, Huston said.
Since the strip club opened about a year ago, it has brought trouble, said Baisden and her neighbor, Betty Brown.
“This is just nuts. They’re shooting up houses and killing people,” said Brown, who has lived in her house 22 years.
After Brown found a hole in her porch railing morning, she spoke to Baisden and Zachary, who hunted for the bullet that caused it.
Zachary found it as he lifted up the cover on Brown’s barbecue.
“Don’t touch it,” Baisden warned her son.
“I’m not stupid,” he said.
Then Brown called the police to report it.